Attention, Negative Affect, and Altruism: An Ecological Validation

This field study attempted to replicate the finding that sadness decreases generosity and also to test the plausi bility of the suggestion that sadness decreases generosity because it decreases the radius of attention. Donations to a well-known charity were collected both prior to and after movies which had independently been rated as sad or neutral. The sad movies produced significantly lower donation rates than the neutral movies. An attention manipulation did not alter this relationship, suggesting that the negative mood effect is not mediated by a decreased radius of attention.